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"If you look at pediatric Covid mortality, a large fraction of the deaths occurs in infants ages 0-1."

Two considerations:

1) I feel this statement lacks context, as it gives impression there are a lot of pediatric Covid deaths which I don't see represented in the data. For 2021 there were 29, 711 total deaths ages 0-14. Of those, 287 were recorded as Covid representing just under 1% of all pediatric deaths. Yes, roughly 32% of those were in the 0-1 cohort, but this group already accounts for 70% of all pediatric deaths, so the early infant mortality rate would likely explain this considering....

2) there are zero excess deaths in this age cohort*, so could it be that this is a group where deaths are "with covid" instead of "because of covid"? How could Covid vaccinations lower all-cause mortality in groups where there is no increase in annual deaths? This also applies to ages 1-14 as well, once you back out the increases in accidental deaths, the baseline is unchanged for 2020 and 2021 (appears the case for 2022 but too early for Wonder).

This applies to other countries as well, so unlikely it's dependent on healthcare model.

* From Wonder:

Year // Deaths Age <1 // Ages 1-14 [excludes accidental deaths]

2019 // 19,392 // 5,902

2020: // 18,142 // 5,668

2021 // 18,347 // 5,955

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CDC posted detailed files of the cause of death by age groups for 2020 and 2021 earlier this week:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/VitalStatsOnline.htm#Mortality_Multiple

I just started downloading the files and am going through them now. Might help in answer the question I posed yesterday - are these "with Covid" or "because of Covid".

Thought you might be interested too, maybe pass on to one of your analysts to go through them?

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What will be the best COVID19 vaccination strategy for babies whose mothers received 3rd trimester COVID19 vaccination?

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Thanks once again!

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